This invention relates to a method for acquiring, by a mobile terminal located in the vicinity of a display panel, additional information linked to at least one display present on the display panel.
Advertising display panels are communication media that make it possible to address a message to consumers passing in front of this medium. They are placed on the outside or on the inside and make it possible to present a product or a service to consumers.
This presentation of the product or services on the display panel can be performed by, for example, a paper or polymer display placed on the display panel that is optionally lit or backlit, or by a plasma or LCD screen or an electronic ink display.
The invention relates to a method and a device supplying a consultation service of additional information to a consumer located in front of a display panel that makes it possible for him to obtain additional information on the product or services presented on this panel quickly and simply.
Different methods or devices have been proposed to make possible such a service.
For example, on a display, a product is presented and also telephone numbers or addresses of distributors or of stores are indicated where it is possible to obtain them.
This very simple method is, however, not practical because the distributors or stores indicated can be located far from the display panel.
To eliminate this drawback, it has been proposed, for example, to add a banner indicating the stores or the nearby service providers, which, here again, is not very practical, not practical for the consumer but for the manager of the advertising panels who is forced to personalize each display as a function of the location where it is placed. Also, such a method exhibits the drawback of interfering with the esthetics of the display, which is very troublesome in view of the considerable efforts put forth to create beautiful displays.
In another system of the prior art (for example, EP 2 026 275 A1 and EP 1 587 014 A1), it has been proposed to print on the displays themselves an optical code that is recognizable by dedicated software. The consumer interested by the product presented on the display uses, for example, his mobile telephone in photo mode to capture the optical code of the display. To search for additional information, the consumer is connected to a server either in an indirect way or in a direct way by use of a URL associated with the product that is the object of the display and thus to access additional information on this product.
However, this method exhibits the drawback that the optical code that is added does not necessarily correspond to the graph chart used in the display and thus can compromise its aesthetic integrity. Also, since the display placed on different panels is always the same, it is impossible to identify the panel on which the consumer has seen the display when he retrieves the corresponding additional information.
Also, to access the additional information, the consumer must take a photo of the optical code with a mobile telephone equipped with a photo device, transmit this image by MMS to a remote server that recognizes the code, a server that resends the corresponding URL by SMS to the user. Using the browser of his mobile telephone, the consumer can ultimately download and consult the additional information from the URL received in the SMS message.
In another proposed method, the consumer downloads an application, installs it on his mobile telephone, and then he launches this application that, by the photo mode of his mobile telephone, retrieves the image of the optical code and then analyzes it. This analysis reveals the URL either directly if it is encoded by the optical code, or by a remote server to which the application is connected by the mobile telephone network. The server sends back to the application the URL corresponding to the data item encoded by the optical code. The application can then open the browser of the mobile telephone that will then download the additional information from the URL received.
In another proposed method, the additional information is sent to the consumer on his mobile telephone by the advertising display panel equipped with a radio transmitter that detects and establishes the communication with the mobile telephones equipped with a radio link, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, for example. However, each panel needs a considerable storage capacity to store all of the additional information. Also, each display panel should store personalized data of said panel.
Consequently, it is necessary to update each panel with different data. This method furthermore presents an intrusive troublesome character that can give rise to a violation of privacy since the downloading of the additional data can be done automatically when a mobile terminal is found in the vicinity of the display panel.
In another system of the prior art (for example, US 2002/0116268 A1), it is proposed to use an RFID-type label affixed to the advertising display to make it possible for a mobile terminal to retrieve the URL making it possible to access the additional information. This system exhibits the drawback that since all of the displays of a certain piece of information have the same RFID, it is not possible for the mobile terminal to have a piece of information on the display panel on which it is installed, which limits the additional information that can be provided.
To eliminate this drawback, it has also been proposed in the prior art (U.S. Pat. No. 6,549,625 B1) to provide a transmitter of electromagnetic waves (optical or radio, for example) in the vicinity of the panel and containing the positional information. A mobile terminal, located in the perimeter covered by the electromagnetic wave transmitter and equipped to be able to receive the electromagnetic signal, is able to retrieve this positional information and to transmit it to a central system that is able to identify the information displayed on the panel and therefore to send additional information back to the mobile terminal.
However, this system exhibits several serious drawbacks. Actually, said electromagnetic transmitter, which transmits electromagnetic waves, consumes power; if several panels are located at distances that are close to one another, there are risks of interference between these waves and a multiplication of risks of collision of the messages; finally, the mobile terminal entering the perimeter of coverage can be activated by said electromagnetic waves, which generates the electric power consumption in the mobile terminals, a very disturbing consumption because the life of a charge of the battery is a crucial parameter for the user of the mobile terminal.
In these different methods of the prior art, the process of accessing the additional information is detrimental to the esthetics of the display, to the freedom of the consumer, and to the life of the charge of the battery of the mobile terminal.